The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-02-05

performance of a glorious ministry.
The natural world is a ministration of
death written and engraven in stones.
The qualification of the earth's crust
is largely but the piling up of massive
volumes stored with memorials of dead
creations. 1t is vast neurology, a re-
cord of the departed who have become
in a measure their own biographers,
for death has breathed its mysterious
spell again and again, and the pulses of
nature have ceased to beat over wide
extended tracts of earth, and it's myri-
ads of living things have sunk down
into inanimate hieroglyphics; the masto-
don and its kindred monsters have
ceased to make the earth tremble be-
meath their ponderous tread, their huge
frames fell asunder and bestrewed the
earth like the bleaching fragments of a
wreck, to find burial at last beneath
the debris of other organisms which in
their turn attained the measure of their
days, for the earth has gathered to her
breast again and yet again, 1.-THE mil
lions that were born of her amounted,
aforementioned tribes"
What were once the sunlit forests,
now lie superposed above each other in
the coal measures like the arches of
buried temples; the once crisp leaves
that blanketed the ground through sue
cessive autumns, now rest in the beds
of shale; mountains that rise in silent
majesty upon immovable foundations,
are largely composed of the remains of
extinct creations, and where the clouds
to-day gather their feecy folds about
their sky pointing peaks
1.-THE yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Have blended like corn on the upland lea."
The sweet scented orange groves, and
stately palms of Florida, with all the
luxuriance of tropical vegetation, -four
ish upon the solid masonry of the
coral insect, the mausoleum of its arch
fleets. And when at last we turn to
man, there is no exception to the mex
orable decree, as nature has memorial
lied its progress from the earliest geo.
logical ages by it's fossil mementoes and
left its testimonies in the rocks by pet
rifications, which economically formed
their habitations when living, their
monuments when dead; so with man,
in his ruined cities, temples, palaces,
obelisk medallions, the stony memoir
ais of his career fill the mighty museum
of the world. Deep beneath the ruins
of ancient civilization the arch@ologist
lays bare the bas-reliefs, the sculptured
friezes and shattered fragments of the
glowing ideals of genius, of those who
long since slept the last sleep. Nine
veh, Babylon and hundred gated
Thebes, unseal their clay lips and break
the mysterious spell of silence that has
fallen upon them for ages, and reveal
tidings locked by Deaths noiseless hand
in their hidden sepulchres. Those old
Egyptian kings reared the pyramids to
hold them in everlasting remembrance,
out Of stones composed of the embalmed
bodies of nummulitic molluscs which
had gone the way Of all the earth long
before them, and they stand in the
drifted wastes of sand which has borne
into oblivion the millions who contrib
uted to raise them as the silent but en-
phatic witnesses of the transitory dura-
ton of human grandeur. But monu-
ments are more significant in cities than
in cemeteries. 1t requires no far fetch
ed effort of imagination as we walk the
fianked by the interminable
line of warehouses with all the tumult
and confusion Of busy life, to feel that
we are, in sense, walking in city of
the dead. How many thousands have
trodden these pavements with steps
that spurned decay, with hearts as light
as yours-who have toiled in building
these structures-who have passed in
and out of these doorways, upon whom
the doors of the tomb have swung and
hark-they are slowly creaking upon
their hinges again, to receive these
whose laugh rings so merrily on the air,
or whose profane mouthings so jar upon
the ear, to receive these who all the
impress wear of health and beauty, to
receive, how soon, you, 1, now PEN
sively philosophizing in these ever shift
ing scenes, on which we will gaze with
mortal vision no more forever. Tramp,
ramp, tramp, the world is marching
and disappearing in the shadowy realms
If the stern monarch of the grave.
Now, what is the meaning of all this
Is death then alone absolute, is it for
his alone that the world is yelled in
beauty, that nature garlands itself with
lowers, mantles its rocks and hills with
zines, its wales with verdure, and builds
he green arcades of the forests; is it
'nly that they may perish ? Is man
porn only to die, and mingle his dust
With that of his proudest works: is
ieath the goal of life ? Not so, there
s something beyond, as there was some
hing beyond the law eternal life.
Il is a ministratiOn: once comprehend